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It seems that everyone and his Chud brother has an excuse for beating, maiming or killing animals these days. It wasn’t long ago when we reported that a man had beat his own dog to death with a hammer because it was already dying, and now James Pascal, 31, of Tampa, Florida claims that he attached a bulldog with a machete and a pipe out of “self-defense.”

OK, I’ll definitely buy a woman shooting her husband as self-defense—especially if she’s got a black eye and has filed plenty of ignored police reports. But she hacks him to death with a machete and a pipe, I’m thinking yeah, lady, you’ve probably got some issues.

And I’m thinking the same goes for Mr. Pascal, who says that he was trying to rehabilitate the abused American bulldog when the dog attacked him.

His own neighbors reported the abuse, saying that he coaxed the two-year-old dog into his yard just to beat the crap out of it with said machete and pipe; but Pascal denies the Hillsborough County Animal Services’s claim against him, which landed him a night in jail.

In fact, he says that he’d had the dog for three days already, after it had been abandoned next door. “I took the dog to nurture the dog. You look at a dog and you know it’s a bad dog, but you say, maybe I can bring it back,” he insists. He had planned on doing this, he claims, by socializing the dog with his own pit bull mix, making her “a regular house dog, able to defend the yard.”

He also claims that the dog had been used for fighting, as indicated by the bite marks on its neck, and he subsequently called it “Princess.” According to Pascal, “Princess” had attacked him in the afternoon as he attempted to tie her up in the backyard preceding a neighborhood cookout. He picked up a machete that was apparently lying around to defend himself.

Anyone else out there have a machete just waiting to be picked up for random dog attacks and possible toddler play? Anyone, anyone?

So after hitting the dog with what Pascal claims is a “dull” machete, he watched it escape down the road—leaving an ear behind.

Yes, boys and girls, this animal lover managed to slice off a dog’s ear while supposedly defending himself.

Witnesses say it happened a bit differently—that the dog had been walking by when Pascal lured it into its yard, laughing as he brutally beat it and then cut its ear off purposefully with the machete.

Sounds like a real gem of a neighbor, the kind of guy you’d tell where you kept your spare key for sure.

Pascal says that he’s against dog fighting, and threw away his $110 Michael Vick jersey because of his steadfast beliefs. What a modern day knight.